Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, two former Gawker editors, have decided to venture out on their own. The Awl is their creation, a not so pretty blog at the moment. The welcome post is nothing to get excited about, but the about page tells the story a bit more thorough:

It was birthed from the following thoughts: What if there were a website that zippily surveyed a wealth of resonant, weird, important, frightening, amusing bits of news and ideas? And what if it weren’t totally clogged with reality show linkbait?